Gordon's Tech: Google's splog mislabeling continues

Google's splog (spam blog) identification process reminds me of our incompetent FBI's No-Fly list. In the last few weeks I've twice gotten the "captcha of doom" requirement on posting. The good news is that if you respond rapidly Google seems to remove their sanction pending review. There's no sign anything has happened though, if you enter the magic URL: h
http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?blogID=123454 where you replace the 123454 with the Blogger blog ID.

Google spreadsheets: Lord this is buggy

I've been using Google Spreadsheets for some collaborative projects. Good Lord, this is buggy stuff. Slow too. Google has a reputation for calling release-quality products "beta", but in this case alpha is the right label.

It's a great idea, but there's a lot of work left to do.

Adobe Contribute for OS X

Adobe - Contribute - a curious application which sounds vaguely like a modern equivalent of Microsoft's old FrontPage, but for OS X. Free trial, cost $150. Not obvious how well it works with Blogger.

I am likely to give it a try, but probably in the new year after the bugs get worked a bit.

Disappearing Aperture Libraries: very nasty bug

A very nasty bug. To recover you need to switch to an earlier version! Affects people who named a project using an initial "." character. That was legal in the old version, illegal in the new. See Aperture: Folders or Projects missing after 1.5 update installed.

From other kb articles it sounds like a patch for Aperture is on the way soon. I'll be waiting until they finally fix the non-functional date metadata.

Mac Windows integration: avoid special characters

The advice from this specific kb article is probably applicable to any mixed Windows/Mac environment. Anything that's "named" should stick to the old "non-special" ascii character set, including usernames and passwords ...

Mac OS X 10.4: Can't print to a printer shared by Microsoft Windows

...

* The printer's shared name contains a space or special character (see below).
* The name of the computer sharing the printer contains a space or special character.
* The Windows user's name or user's password contains a space or special character.

What's a 'special character?' It's a typed character other than A-Z, 0-9, !, $, *, (, ), _, , -, ' . .

The following are not special characters and are OK to use in the printer name, Windows computer name, Windows user name, and Windows user password:

A a B b C c D d E e F f G g H h I i J j K k L l M m N n O o P p Q q R r S s T t U u V v W w X x Y y Z z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 . ! $ * ( ) _ - '"

By the time we all support UTF-8, we'll need to move to a character set that supports non-human languages ....

Google groups

Google Groups has been revampled including integration of Google Page Creator. Groups have RSS feeds. When they add Google Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Writely and Google Blogger to Google Groups this will be a sensational resource for small organizations, like my cub scout troop.

Even now one can tie those things together independently, but as a kit they'll be worth much more.

Subversive: build google gadgets into your web page

Sneaky. Very sneaky. You can now put a Google gadget on a web page. Will they work with Safari? I suspect not. Another nail in Safari's coffin -- Long-live Safari/Gecko.

Is it my imagination, or has Google made a sudden dramatic shift away from a 'portal' strategy to more of an 'cloud' strategy? Diffuse functionality everywhere...

Insidious.